As the year known as 2025 winds to a close, I wanted to share a tangible outcome of this year’s Open Education Awards for Excellence. The process this year was wrapped visually and metaphorically in an ecological theme, with an ask in the call for nominations to Plant Seeds of Recognition.
These “seeds” were collected by OEGlobal, and all have been shared to be made visible. Our gardeners (previous award winners) helped nurture the “seeds” into the Shortlist of Finalists. They then blossomed as the 2025 Award Winners, announced in a live-streamed ceremony in October at the close of the OEGlobal Tour. Along the way, all nominees, shortlisted finalists, and finalists were issued digital badges.
In the past, we had given out a special award trophy, 3D printed for us by the Fab Lab Kä Träre, at UNED, Distance State University of Costa Rica. But given the production and shipping costs, we were only able to present the trophies to the Individual Award Winners.
This year, in keeping with our theme, we organized something tangible to give in the name of all awardees. We were able to plant a total of 900 trees in the names of all awardees, through the organization One Tree Planted. All Award winners received a customized card and certificate acknowledging this contribution to the world’s forests.
One Tree Planted is an environmental nonprofit that is dedicated to making it simple for anyone to help the environment. Our simplified donation process and global reach has helped us build a movement of supporters who believe in the power of trees.
https://onetreeplanted.org/pages/about-us
Since 2014, we have planted over 135.5 million trees with 378 partners across 82 countries. Through this work, we’ve restored over 118,518 hectares (292,864 acres) of forest around the world, made 106 cities greener by planting urban trees for environmental justice and tree equity, and more.
One Tree Planted provides updates on reforestation actions across Africa, Asia, Oceania, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North America.
If you are looking for a holiday gift idea, through One Tree Planted, you can give the gift of planting trees in the name of someone you care about.
And, as with seed planting, tree growing is cyclical; you can already start planning what seeds you will be planting in 2026. In May, we will again call for the open education community to recognise a new round of seeds for the 2026 Open Education Awards for Excellence. Between now and then, keep a list or a mental note of a person, project, or resource that ought to be recognised and nominated.
Winning awards and having trees planted are just bonuses; the real gain is being able to share so many nominations in 2025.
Image Credit: Tisza River – artificially planted forest, floodplain near Algyoe Hungary Wikimedia Commons photo by Takkk shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.
